Despotate of Epirus

The Despotate of Epirus was a Byzantine rump state in Greece which existed from 1205 to 1340 and from 1356 to 1479. It was established in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade by the Angelos dynasty, and it claimed to be the legitimate successor of the Byzantine Empire. Under Theodore Komnenos Doukas, the despotate conquered the Kingdom of Thessalonica in 1224 and founded the Empire of Thessalonica. After the 1230 Battle of Klokotnitsa, the Epirote tide was halted and reversed by the Second Bulgarian Empire, and it was conquered by the resurgent Byzantine Empire from 1337 to 1340. In 1356, Nikephoros II Orsini restored the kingdom, but it gradually fell to the Ottoman Empire, with its last stronghold of Vonitsa falling in 1479.